Wheeled 'cottages' aimed at seniors

Bob Novak faces an unusually irksome challenge in building his new business: Selling an unfamiliar product.

James Walsh

Bob Novak faces an unusually irksome challenge in building his new business: Selling an unfamiliar product.

What Novak has to sell combines his 40 years of home-building experience with a patient eye toward offering what he sees as an alternative to assisted-living or nursing-home care.

Echo Cottages aims to bring aging parents or grandparents closer to their children and grandchildren. In fact, it wants to bring them right into their loved ones' yards.

The "cottages" are 12-by-40-foot structures on wheels that can be placed near the home of a senior's family. They're fitted out with all the comforts — microwave, stove, walk-in shower, washer-dryer — and enhanced with wood floors and trim. Foam insulation, Bob Novak said, ensures year-round comfort.

Novak, who has yet to complete a sale, said the cottages can be rented month-to-month for $1,300 or bought for $60,000, including installation that covers hooking the cottage up to the host house's utilities.

The company won the 2013 innovative business award from the Dutchess County Economic Development Corp.

Now, two years after the company was founded, Novak would like to win over some customers.

He compares it to the reluctance of people to be the first to buy into a subdivision. Once one does, others quickly follow.

"It's a very tough business to get started, because no one's ever heard of it," Novak said one morning in his model cottage off Route 82 in Hopewell Junction.

"You're introducing it not only to people, but to municipalities, health departments, the state."

Nearly a dozen Dutchess County towns have zoning that accommodates the cottages, Novak said. He recently joined the Orange County Chamber of Commerce in an effort to spread the word across the river.

He said he'd like to arrange a meeting at the chamber where he can introduce the cottage concept of elder care to Orange County municipal officials.

"You could have 100 of these spread all over town, and you wouldn't know they're there," he said.

Town of Wallkill Supervisor Dan Depew said he was sensitive to the housing needs of seniors, but homeowners couldn't roll the cottages into their yards without the town's permission.

"Without a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals, this wouldn't be permitted in any zone in the town," Depew said. "It would be considered two residences on one lot and block, which isn't allowed anywhere in the Town of Wallkill."

The Hudson Valley is projected by the Cornell University Program on Applied Demographics to see a 43 percent increase in people 65-plus by 2030. That means nearly 145,000 more people in that age category.

Using that finding and other research, Pattern for Progress, an advocate of regional planning, identified housing as a key need of elders in a recent report.

According to Pattern, Orange County has about 3,423 units of affordable senior housing, but "based upon projections of seniors over the next 20 to 30 years, this will not meet the needs of this age cohort," Pattern stated.

Novak has found widespread interest in his housing concept, judging from activity on the company's website, echocottages.com. There have been hits from every state except Wyoming, as well as 39 countries. Every month brings 1,000 new searches on the site.

"And this is just since July," when the site was launched, Novak said, "and with no advertising."